Federal Election 2013 – Hall Greenland for Grayndler

The Federal Prime Minister has announced that the next Federal Election will be held on 14 September 2013.

The Greens have preselected award-winning journalist, community activist and former Councillor Hall Greenland as the Greens Grayndler Candidate in 2013.

The seat of Grayndler will be decided between the ALP and the Greens. The seat is currently held by Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese, who won the seat by 54 per cent to the Greens’ 46 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis at the last federal election.

Hall has lived in Grayndler almost his entire life – and it’s where he has served his community. He went to school at Summer Hill and Fort Street. As a student at Sydney University, he joined the famous Freedom Ride, which traveled to country towns in NSW, to expose the racial segregation and discrimination against Aborigines that was still rife. He also edited the student newspaper and helped launch Australia’s anti-Vietnam War movement.

Hall served as a Councillor on Leichhardt Council and in the 1980s Hall was among the founders of The Greens. He was inspired by the huge growth in the environmental and anti-nuclear movements of the 1980s. He was also disillusioned by how far the Labor Party he’d joined as a teenager had moved away from its ideals.

Early Greens banner, 1980s

Locally his chief environmental achievements as a community organiser and advocate have included:
• Establishment of bicentennial park on the shores of Rozelle Bay in 1988, where previously there had been abandoned industrial wastelands, then slated for commercial development. Hall was coordinator of the Save Rozelle Bay campaign.
• Save Callan Park – 61 hectares of beautiful heritage grounds, the largest park in Grayndler – from high-rise development. Hall has been either secretary or president of Friends of Callan Park since the group was founded in 1998

On both occasions the battle was with State Labor governments who wanted to flog off public land to developers.

Hall is now part of the campaign to stop Westconnex, the ill-conceived $13bn motorway project, which aims to connect the M4 to the airport. He also supports high-speed rail being developed to ease congestion at Sydney Airport, with a replacement airport to eventually to be built outside the Sydney area.

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The Marrickville and Petersham-Newtown Greens are the local groups for members of The Greens political party living in the Sydney suburbs of Dulwich Hill, Enmore, Lewisham, Marrickville, Newtown, Petersham, St Peters, Stanmore, Sydenham and Tempe.

All electoral comment on this site authorised by Richard Morrell 19 Eve Street Erskinville NSW